Celebrity Dylan

I didn’t really start listening to Bob Dylan until the 80’s, so I’m not one of those people who regards him as having provided some sort of counter-culture soundtrack to my youth, but I do like him. Initially, I had no interest in this book, but when I found myself in a bookstore with time to kill, I started reading it and found it absorbing.

(I recall a colleague who said many years ago, his voice dripping with sarcasm: “My friend wants to write a biography of Dylan – something for which there is a crying need.”)

The book is not chronological-each chapter has a theme or subject, and it leaves out large portions of what most people would expect to be in such a memoir: his motorcycle accident; being booed at Newport when he “went electric”; Joan Baez; smoking grass and The Beatles, and so on. None of that here. Well, there are a few lines about when he first saw Baez perform someplace. The book is idiosyncratic and self-absorbed, like Dylan. It focuses on what he wants to think is important in his story, not what others might think.

I found the parts about his early life in Minnesota and the start of his career in NYC the most interesting. If you are a musician or a Dylan fanatic, you will probably like the long chapter on the production of the album “Oh Mercy,” his comeback record, which he describes in detail. He also writes lengthy passages about the evolution of his performing style, which may or may not convice you that you should enjoy how he sings his old songs in concert. It’s interesting as a record of how one artist grapples with the issue, though.

His obsession with Woody Guthrie, encounters with folk music purist-snobs, the evocation of the Greenwich Village folk-beat scene, vignettes of the recording business, encounter with the music of Robert Johnson – all this makes for good reading and tells a lot about how folk/pop music is made. After reading it, you realize that Dylan is what you always thought he was when you ignored the pop culture hype: he’s a strange, brilliant, driven, introverted, sharp, naive man – in some ways maybe still the raw kid he was when he came to NYC.

This brings me to my other theme – his celebrity status. He never was a celebrity the way the Brittany Spears and the like are. He rarely courted celebrity, yet he looms large over pop culture, even today. Why did so many see him as an “icon of their generation,” or some such rot. Even I, who do not, am fascinated. By what? I certainly wouldn’t want to have dinner with him!

Somehow, purposely or not, he created an image which resonated with millions of people. I suspect that in his case, it was largely because of his introversion and the ambiguity of his songs. He was saying something he thought and saw – but people took away and created what they wanted. That’s part of the art-game, but for some reason people felt empowered in some way by their image of him. Isn’t this what image making is all about?

Usually “the image” is a disparaging term, at least among highbrow intellectuals. (Are there any left?) I’m thinking of the book that is often called “seminal,” Boorstein’s “The Image.” But images have always been with us – they are just more powerful now. The disjunction between the image and the reality revealed in Chronicles is what fascinates me. He’s just a guy, a talented guy, but he’s had all this influence over people. Why? Where does “he” end and his image begin? Probably this question destroys some people in the biz…